The Church and the Jewish People Part 9: The Forgotten History of the Church

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It's absolutely free. Sign up today for the frontline newsletter. We're continuing our series on Israel and the Jewish people. Why Israel's salvation should matter to you. Why the Gospel is to the Jew first.

Why is it that Jewish people have a different view of church history than many Christians do? Let's start to go there today. And along with the Bible, the textbook we're using is our hands are stained with blood just on the home page of the website. It's yours for your gift of any size. You can also call 800-538-5275. 800-538-5275.

Your gift of any size. We really want to get this out to every single one of you. It's must reading. The book first came out in 1992 and never went out of print.

Think of that. Never went out of print. And then finally, 2019. So almost 30 years later, we then updated, expanded it to make it even richer. And it continues to open eyes and get rave reviews. So make sure you get a copy.

800-538-5275. Yours for your gift of any size to help us with our Jewish outreach and our ministry. Thank you, Mr. Eddard Flannery who made the comment that the pages of history Jews have memorized, Christians have torn out of their books. Because I do academic work as well as preaching and ministering on things like revival and dealing with the culture wars, because I do academic work, my PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures for New York University, I have lectured at numerous seminaries. I have served as either a visiting or an adjunct professor at at least eight different seminars in the world.

now, and some of them are among the finest in the world. I'm talking about high quality Christian education. I'm talking about scholars who know the languages, who know the word, who know the culture, who know the background, and who are godly Christian men and women as well. So I've had the privilege of lecturing at some of these. Was never able to take a full-time position because of other responsibilities in ministry, but it's one of my great privileges to lecture at seminaries, master's level, PhD level, things like that. So I was talking to a famous church historian once, a man literally who in a week will forget more church history than I've learned in my lifetime.

I mean, I don't think that's much of an exaggeration. I'm talking about a towering scholar in church history. So I said to him, when do you teach about some of the bad stuff, anti-Semitism in church history? For example, John Christastom, one of the great early church leaders over 1,500 years ago, still very highly regarded to this day, especially in Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox circles. So when you teach about his infamous seven sermons against the Jews, and this professor said, we don't. Well, what about Martin Luther, the great reformer, the one who did such a massive work in changing wrong theology and steering the church away from corruption and tradition and things, but had some horrifically ugly things to say at the end of his life against the Jewish people. When you teach about that, he said, we don't.

And he was a little ashamed as he said it. See, this is the norm, that we just tell a lot of the good stuff and the things that make our people look good. And often, we leave out the really bad stuff. And for example, if you ask for the history of America through Native American eyes, it's going to be very different than the history of America, maybe through someone just enjoying successful America today and looks at our amazing nation, all the good, and doesn't realize some of the bloody history. Or when we talk about America through our contemporary eyes today, say as someone living in the 21st century, versus what's your view of America as a slave brought over here by American slave owners and American slave traders, you have a very different view.

So Jewish people look at church history a lot differently than many Christians do. And we're just talking about truth. All we're talking about is truth.

If you're here, let me tell you this. If you're afraid of the truth, by all means, do not get Our Hands Are Stammered Fly. Don't get it, don't read it. If you don't want to know the truth, if you'd rather kind of close your eyes and make believe the thing never happened, then by all means, don't buy the book. If truth is toxic to you, if you have an aversion to truth, don't go anywhere near the book.

Conversely, if you want the truth, you have to read it. You have to read it. So look at what Paul writes, Romans 11, writing to Gentile believers. He's identified them as Gentile.

Romans 11, verses 17 to 19. If some of the branches were broken off, who's he speaking about? Individual Jews, part of this olive tree, which has its roots in the Messiah and the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So the individual branches, those are individual Jewish people. If some of the branches were broken off, right, why? Because of unbelief. And you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches.

If you are, remember, it is not you who supports the root, but the root who supports you. Do you understand what's being said? There's an arrogance saying, well, God cut them off. God cut them off because they didn't believe.

We are now the new kids in the block. And Paul says, no, no, no, don't be arrogant. If you can be arrogant, you can be cut off too. You Gentile believers, you were like from a wild olive tree, and God grafted you into the natural olive tree. So if he cut off the natural branches, you better believe he's gonna cut you off if you do not stand in faith. And in the same way, if the natural branches repent, they can be grafted back in, so don't be arrogant.

You don't own this tree now. Often, church history has been marked by that very arrogance, by this very idea that we are the new Israel, we have replaced the old Israel, God has finished with the old Israel, all the promises are now ours, and Paul says, beware. That arrogance based on ignorance will lead to you being cut off as well. Listen to what Franz Delitzsch said, and all these quotes that I'm gonna read to you, every single one of them, you'll find in Our Hands Are Stained with Blood.

So if you're trying to write them down quickly, or if you're watching on a subsequent video of this, and we haven't released the videos yet, but if when you are watching on video, you wanna just take pictures of all the slides, you can do that, but every single quote and a whole lot more are in Our Hands Are Stained with Blood. Franz Delitzsch was one of the greatest Old Testament scholars of the 1800s, German, Christian, Lutheran, with a great heart for the Jewish people. And Franz Delitzsch said this, the church still owes the Jews the actual proof of Christianity's truth. Is it surprising that the Jewish people are such an insensitive and barren field for the gospel? The church itself has drenched it in blood and then heaped stones on it.

Let me read to you again, the Catholic scholar Edward Flannery in full. The vast majority of Christians, even well educated, are all but totally ignorant of what happened to Jews in history and of the culpable involvement of the church. It is little exaggeration to state that those pages of history Jews have committed to memory are the very ones that have been torn from Christian and secular history books. Now, please understand, I'm not telling you as a Christian today who loves Israel and who loves the Jewish people that you should feel guilty personally about what Martin Luther said or John Chrysostom said or the Crusaders did. No, not at all.

The last thing I'm trying to do is make you feel guilty. I want you to understand, though, why many Jewish people have a problem with Jesus. It's not just rejecting him for who he is and who he was, but it's that the church has put a wall between the original Yeshua, Rabbi Yeshua the Messiah, put a wall between him and the Jewish people how? By making him into this alien Gentile figure, pulling him away from his Jewish roots. You know, the Nazis actually went so far as to say that Jesus was not Jewish, that he was Aryan, just like they were, and that they actually had a version of the New Testament they put out that removed all the pro-Jewish parts of the Bible? Yeah, and anything that would emphasize the Jewishness of Yeshua, to try to rewrite it?

They actually did that. German theologians did that. So you have works of art in the Middle Ages, and Jesus is a beautiful European-looking guy, beautiful long hair, blue eyes, light skinned, and the rabbis, the Jewish leaders, they look like demons.

Yeah, I mean, this is some of the artwork. So you make Jesus into this Gentile figure, completely separated from his roots, and separated from his Jewish people. This is the God of this new religion, and then you persecute Jews who don't follow him. You offer them baptism or death, and you speak against him in the ugliest terms. What are Jewish people gonna think? They're not even gonna know who he is, and to the extent they know who he is, they want nothing to do with him. A few years ago when I was in Israel, I was surrounded by these ultra-Orthodox Jews, and when I told them I believe Yeshua is the Messiah, one of them turned, there was a camera filming this, turned and began to spit on the ground, said, we don't believe in Yeshua.

That's how they know his name. We don't believe in Yeshua. We don't believe in Yeshua, saying it in Hebrew.

Spitting on the ground. Well, the Jesus he knows is not the Jesus of the New Testament, it's not the real Yeshua. In his mind, there's a straight line from the New Testament to the Holocaust.

That's why he's so hostile. So it's important to understand this. You have to feel burdened by it. It may drive you to tears of prayer, but it's to be aware, and then to know, okay, what do we do then?

When we talk to a Jewish person, what do we do? So we're gonna help you. We're gonna deal with all these things. In fact, I'm gonna start getting into some eye-opening quotes. We'll do it right now on the other side of this break. Listen to this important announcement.

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Call 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584 or online at trivita.com. Welcome back to the Line of Fire. Thanks so much for joining us as we stand together, friends, to equip you, to empower you here on the front lines. John Chrysostom, after his death, was given the name Chrysostom, meaning golden mouth. He was considered to be one of the most eloquent, articulate preachers of the gospel, lived mainly in the fourth century. So when you think of people like Augustine, Jerome, some of the most famous leaders in church history, he's within a century of these men. A powerful preacher, revivalist, based in Antioch and in some other locations. At a certain point in time, from what we understand, people in this congregation were becoming interested in the synagogue, they were interested in the Jewish holy days and things like that, and this got Chrysostom very upset. So he preached a sermon, a series of seven sermons against the Jews. There's actually an eighth that was preached, but you only hear about seven sermons against the Jews.

May I read some excerpts, some highlights of the words of John Chrysostom, one of the great preachers in the church in many centuries? The synagogue is worse than a brothel. It is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts, the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults, the refuge of brigands and debauches, and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews, a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ, a house worse than a drinking shop, this is the synagogue, a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, the gulf and abyss of perdition.

I would say the same things about their souls. John Chrysostom, thundering this message, he said that basically brute beasts, you fatten them for slaughter, that's pretty much where the Jewish people are at, be fattened for the slaughter. As for me, he said, I hate the synagogue, I hate the Jews for the same reason. These words thundered through the corridors of church history, that hating the Jews was somehow a good and sacred thing. To this day, friends, people point me to the sermons of Chrysostom. Anti-Semites say, Dr. Brown, we're just saying what John Chrysostom said, he knew, these Jews are evil. The place where Jewish people pray, the synagogue, that's evil, and God hates the Jews and we hate the Jews.

To this day, people will do it. I saw a YouTube video and it's just all of his sermons, someone just reading all of his sermons against the Jews. In other words, this is a good thing, we need to get this out. July, 1099, in Jerusalem, in the midst of the Crusades. You said the Crusades weren't Christians, there was like crowds, sometimes the pope was against, yes, some of the Crusades organized by the church, they started in 1096, and some just kind of crowd violence. And yeah, there was a concern about Muslims take over the land, now the Christians are gonna fight back against the Muslims, I understand all that, the dynamics going on, but here's what happens. As the Crusaders begin to march through Europe, this is well documented, just study the issues, as the Crusaders begin to march their way through Europe, they realize, wait a second, we have far worse enemies right here in Europe in our backyard, in our own city. We don't just have to deal with the Muslim infidels in the Holy Land, we've got the assassins of Christ here. In fact, the charge that Jews would go to have deicide, because killing Jesus, if Jesus is God, then they killed God, deicide, the assassins of Christ, this basically goes back to Christastom. So you've got this now five, 600 years or longer already, this charge, we have the assassins of Christ in our backyard, so the Crusaders begin to turn on Jews that they had lived side by side with for decades, some cases for centuries, and offered them baptism or death. They offered them baptism or death. That's when the sacred Jewish tradition of martyrdom and reciting the Shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, reciting that rather than, in their mind, apostatize and follow this pagan religion with this pagan God called Jesus, these three gods, this Trinity, this is what they're understanding. No, they're gonna be faithful to the God of Israel. They're offered baptism or death, we'll die, and they died en masse, rather than be baptized.

This really happened, friends, study the city, the history. There's even a slogan developed, Kill a Jew and Save Your Soul. So now Crusader armies found the great battle in Jerusalem. They retake the city July of 1099, and as they do, Jews are herded together or flee into the great synagogue in Jerusalem. And the Crusader armies burn the synagogue to the ground.

Actually, Muslim historians tell the story. They burn the synagogue to the ground. And according to historians, now remember the Crusaders, they got the cross emblazoned on their uniforms. They march around the building, chanting Christ, we adore thee, singing Christ, we adore thee as they burn the Jews alive in the synagogue. That's church history through Jewish eyes. That's what many Jews know about church history. What happens, though, is that there were Jews who under pressure decided to convert rather than die, but it was an outward conversion. Secretly, they continued to practice Judaism. And because of that, the church had to weed this out. Many scholars believe that the Inquisition began trying to weed out Jews from within the church. And they were tortured to death, killed, and their baptismal formulas, they're all, every single one of them, in our hands are stained with blood, that I'm going to quote and reference, where for a Jewish person to convert and to become Catholic, join the church of the day, and it's not to slam the Catholic church, who's about to slam Martin Luther.

In other words, this is something that's gone through church history on all sides. You would have to say things like this to be baptized. I want you to consider this, friends. You would have to renounce all connection to your Jewish people. You would have to say, I will no longer observe the Sabbath, Passover, any of the things.

Paul, Peter, John, all the apostles, they observe these things. No, no, no, we won't do it. We will learn to eat pork.

If we've had a lifetime aversion to it, we'll learn to eat it. We curse the rabbis. We revere Mary.

This is in order to be baptized. You had to say, we're not going to name our children with Hebrew names, we won't intermarry with other Jews, because all Jewishness must be purged from the church. I mean, the level of sinning against God, and sinning against the Jewish Messiah, and sinning against the Jewish people, and violating the very warning of Paul in Romans 11, it is absolutely mind-boggling.

Well, there's a positive change, though, and that comes in the year 1523. Martin Luther, he's had it, and he sees the way the church has treated the Jewish people. And he says, you know, if I had been a Jew, and seen the way the church was treating the Jewish people, I'd rather be a pig than a Christian. And in his typical language, he laid into the cardinals, the bishops, the popes, called them coarse blockheads. So, he wrote this little book in 1523 that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, and called them the older brothers, and said, perhaps, if we could reach out, if we could show them love, and not treat them the way the church has treated them, many of them will come to faith.

It's a great little document. 1523, that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. Luther realized how the church had sinned against the Jewish people in history, and in his day. Saw how that had driven them away from Jesus. Again, just picture a, quote, Christian slave owner, teaching his slave has just been kidnapped, lost his wife and children in Africa, barely survives middle passage, now in cruel chains, doing slave labor, and his Christian slave owner, his white Christian slave owner's gonna tell him about this white savior. Do you think the slave wants to hear that?

That's the one he's gonna reject. So, Luther realized what the gospel sounded like, at least in part to Jewish people, realized how the church had treated Jewish people, and said, hey, we're gonna do things differently. Jesus was actually born a Jew, and the Jewish people, they're the older brothers and sisters, so let's reach out with compassion and see what happens. Well, that's not the end of the story. And, oh, I hate to do this to you, but we're gonna take this over to tomorrow, tomorrow's broadcast.

Tomorrow's broadcast, we're gonna tell you what actually happened, friends. We're gonna tell you the rest of the story, because Martin Luther, as he got older, had a change of heart. And the change of heart was so horrific that when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis kind of rediscovered what he wrote, they thought Luther was a genius, he figured it all out.

I even read one historian who said that Martin Luther was the John the Baptist of Adolf Hitler, the one who prepared the way for Hitler. We tell the story, we'll get into it tomorrow, but we tell all the story and our hands are stained with blood. This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener-supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org and click Donate.